The paradigm strategy

Putting our proposal to test

So far we have given a fairly complete overview of an emerging approach to knowledge (or more technically speaking of an emerging paradigm in knowledge work). What remains is to test this new approach to knowledge by applying it to a practical theme. And by doing that – to put it to practical use.

We began this proposal by talking about an impending Enlightenment-like change; and about an approach to knowledge that can bring it it into being. Now that we've described that approach to knowledge – should we not use it to shed some light on the alluring opportunity we started with?

We shall do that by weaving together or federating insights of giants in the humanities and in the world traditions.

We'll conclude by summarizing our argument – the case for knowledge federation as a new paradigm in knowledge work, and as a new institution capable of developing it as praxis.

Designing the social life of ideas

Notice this subtlety: A novelty in this approach to knowledge is that it cannot and doesn't want to tell how the things "really are in reality". Its purpose is to allow for free creation of a multiplicity of ways of looking at any single theme – and to let them act upon each other.

Communication in this new approach to knowledge is not and cannot be one-way.

By designing and evolving these conversations, we will be developing a new form of social life, where people and ideas interact and improve one another.

We could talk about anything

What subject of conversation do you find most interesting? Education? Or democracy? Or what to do about the large contemporary issues? We could focus on any theme of your choice. And still our conversation is likely to be different from any you've had.

What makes the difference is the single overarching principle we've been discussing from our very first page – where education, and democracy, and anything else that might interest you, is seen within a larger system or a hierarchy of systems. We are already accustomed to perceiving those systems as gigantic socio-technical mechanism, which determine how we live and work. And whether our work will cause more damage, or bring remedy.

What might public informing be like, if we should claim it back from "the invisible hand" (or more precisely from "the attention economy" – see intuitive introduction to systemic thinking) – and develop it as a core system on which all other systems in our society depend? What practical difference might such a public informing make? We can explore similar questions about academic research, or healthcare, or any other activity or system of your choice.

Let's focus on the key point

And yet there is a single theme, which – in this systemic approach to knowledge, and to institutions and issues – must be given priority. There is a single overarching insight that needs to put into a perspective everything else.

Neil Postman gave us this hint:

The problem now is not to get information to people, but how to get some meaning of what's happening.(...) Even the great story of inductive science has lost a good deal of its meaning, because it does not address several questions that all great narratives must address: Where we come from; what's going to happen to us; where we are going, that is; and what we're supposed to do when we are here. Science couldn't answer that; and technology doesn't.

Aurelio Peccei, as we have seen, gave us another hing:

It is absolutely necessary to find a way to change course.

And if it is – in what way could that realistically be achieved?

Large change made easy

Donella Meadows talked about systemic leverage points as those places within a complex system "where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything". She identified "the mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise" as the most impactful kind of systemic leverage point. She identified specifically working with the "power to transcend paradigms" – i.e. with the assumptions and ways of being out of which paradigms emerge – as the most impactful way to intervene into systems.

We are about to propose – as an overarching theme for our various conversations – to approach our contemporary condition in this most powerful way.

While proposing what we are calling the paradigm strategy, we are not proposing to replace the heroic efforts of our colleagues who are focusing on specific issues such as the millennium development goals or the climate change. We are only proposing a way to vastly augment their chances to succeed.

And to turn problems into opportunities; to engage enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit and creativity.

These conversations are dialogs

We are not just talking

Don't be deceived by this word, "conversations". These conversations are where the true action begins.

By developing these dialogs, we want to develop a way to bring the themes that matter into the focus of the public eye. We want to bring the insights of giants to bear upon our understanding and handling of those themes. And we want to engage us all to collaborate on combining those insights with everyone else's, and evolving them further.

The purpose of these conversations is to create a public discourse that works; which makes us collectively creative, knowledgeable and intelligent. We want to evolve in practice, with the help of new media and real-life, artistic situation design, a public sphere in which the themes, the events and the sensations are the stepping stones in our advancement toward a new cultural and social order.

The medium we'll develop will truly be our message!

Changing the world by changing the way we communicate

There is a way of listening and speaking that fits our purpose quite snugly. Physicist David Bohm called it the dialogue, and we'll build further on his ideas and the ideas of others, and weave them together into another one of our keywords, the dialog.

Bohm considered the dialogue to be necessary for resolving our contemporary entanglement. Here is how he described it.

I give a meaning to the word 'dialogue' that is somewhat different from what is commonly used. The derivations of words often help to suggest a deeper meaning. 'Dialogue' comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means 'the word' or in our case we would think of the 'meaning of the word'. And dia means 'through' - it doesn't mean two. A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture of image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which will emerge some new understanding. It's something new, which may not have been in the starting point at all. It's something creative. And this shared meaning is the 'glue' or 'cement' that holds people and societies together.

Contrast this with the word 'discussion', which has the same root as 'percussion' an 'concussion'. It really means to break things up. It emphasises the idea of analysis, where there may be many points of view. Discussion is almost like a Ping-Pong game, where people are batting the ideas back and forth and the object of the game is to win or to get points for yourself. Possibly you will take up somebody else's ideas to back up your own - you may agree with some and disagree with others- but the basic point is to win the game. That's very frequently the case in a discussion.

In a dialogue, however, nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins. There is a different sort of spirit to it. In a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular view prevail. Rather, whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of anybody, everybody gains. It's a situation called win-win, in which we are not playing a game against each other but with each other. In a dialogue, everybody wins.

Real reality shows

Two people could be talking over a coffee table. If they turn on a smartphone and record, their conversation can already become part of the global one.

What we, however, primarily have in mind are public dialogs that begins in physical space and continue online.

We have a hunch that such dialogs could become true sensations!

What could be more real, and more downright engaging, than watching a new Renaissance emerge? Hearing its pulse, feeling its birth pains...

Already seeing our resistance to this emergence, our blind spots, our reluctance to make a step – can be sensational!

The Paradigm Strategy poster

A roadmap for guided evolution of society

We have developed the Paradigm Strategy poster as a evolving roadmap to the key point (an overarching collectively created and shared insight or gestalt, a wormhole into a new social and cultural paradigm, a practical "way to change course").

The idea is to engage everyone's collective intelligence toward developing an overarching key insight, but not only. We shall also put on our map the relevant insights of giants, so that while dialoging we may "stand on their shoulders" and see further. The results of each dialog are federated (with the help of suitable technology such as the Debategraph), the map is updated if necessary, and the whole thing is offered as a starting point for the next dialog, to develop further.

We recommend that you look at the poster as we speak.

You may imagine the left-hand side of the poster, which has the yellow background, as a roadmap for a collective ascent to the key point in the middle of the poster, which is a mountain top and a view from that mountain top. Four ways are offered to reach it (you may imagine them as corresponding to four sides of the mountain, or as four aspects of the key point).

The right-hand side of the poster, with white background, shows ways to realize the overarching vision after it has been reached, by first identifying design patterns, and then implementing them within prototypes.

The poster as it is now represents a starting point – how we see the key point and the way to it now, before the dialogs have begun.

The key point offered is in essence what we've presented on the front page, with the help of the bus with candle headlights or the Modernity ideogram. The idea is to challenge the paradigm, the way of evolving culturally and socially, which is marked by unwavering faith in "free competition" and "the invisible hand" – and see if we can empower the use knowledge as guiding light.

Close to the dividing line, on the new paradigm side, you see "bootstrapping". Bootstrapping is shown as that singular act by which we become part of the emerging paradigm, of the guided evolution of society.

Bootstrapping social-systemic change

The poster is conceived as an invitation to begin to bootstrap – and in that way join the emerging paradigm as an aware and active participant.

The poster is interactive; the QR codes open up files with further information (they are hyperlinks, so that also the digital version of the poster is interactive). The "bootstrapping" thread leads to the QR code and file with an interactive online version of the poster – where it's possible to post comments, and in that way be part of the online dialog, through which the presented ideas, and the poster itself, are developed further.

The core insights of giants (and also some other insights, as we shall see) are represented by icons, rendered as vignettes, and combined into threads. By weaving the threads into patterns, and patterns into a gestalt, the central "key point" is reached.

We use vignettes to render abstract and high-level ideas accessible. In this brief summary, we cannot possibly tell each of the 12 vignettes that are presented on the poster! And yet if we only describe them abstractly, we risk to lose the zest and the reality touch.

So what we'll do is a compromise: We'll sketch a couple of vignette in some detail; and we'll give only a gesture drawing of all the rest.

Wiener's paradox

No communication – no control

Let's begin with the first thread, in the upper left corner.

The focus here is on the steering system of "spaceship Earth" (as Fuller called our metaphorical bus). An issue of some interest if we indeed are living in a "runaway world" (as Giddens diagnosed); if we indeed must find a way to change course (as Peccei claimed).

The first giant in this thread is Norbert Wiener. Wiener studied mathematics, zoology and philosophy, and finally got his doctorate from Harvard in mathematical logic – when he was only 17! He went on to do seminal work in several fields, one of which was cybernetics.

The following excerpt is from Wiener's 1948 book Cybernetics (cybernetics is the scientific study of steering).

There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process (...). Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simple-minded theory.

Interpret "homeostatic process" as "steering", and you got Wiener's point.

Or one half of Wiener's point, to be exact.

The other half has to do with the fact that control requires suitable communication – which is the core theme of cybernetics. Our communication is broken – is the second half of Wiener's point. For how else could we believe in this "simple-minded theory" (Wiener argues), considering what von Neumann and Morgenstern found by studying game theory (which they founded)? (Von Neumann and Morgenstern too are giants; among Von Neumann's seminal achievements is the design of the digital computer architecture that is still in use.)

Wiener then summarizes their insights, and explains how they are confirmed by everyday experience.

The invisible hand wins the dispute

We've talked about how Erich Jantsch continued this thread in Federation through Stories. So let us fast-forward to Ronald Reagan and to this thread's conclusion.

In 1980, the year when Erich Jantsch passed away, Reagan won the U.S. presidential elections, by running on an "invisible hand"-based agenda.

In our present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,

Theres's no need for censorship

How did Reagan win this battle of opinions?

We are back to the image of Galilei in house arrest. Today, four centuries later, there is no need for house arrest. Even censorship is no longer needed! In a society where powerful communication media are used to only broadcast messages, it's the campaign dollars and the "air time" they buy that decide what the people are going to believe in.

And what direction the "spaceship Earth" will take.

See this video snippet where Reagan says in a most charming tone

We believe then, and now, there are no limits to growth, and human progress, when men and women are free to follow their dreams

Wiener's paradox pattern

And so already this single thread has brought us to the Wiener's paradox as pattern. We use this pattern to point to situations where academic research has no effect on public opinion whatsoever!

Wiener did not formulate this paradox. He created it (or an instance of it) – by first claiming that the communication is broken, and then committing his own insights to that same communication.

You will have no difficulty noticing that Reagan had no qualifications to argue with those giants – and no need to do that either. He could just simply ignore them! Reagan, and American voters, ignored also thousands of articles in cybernetics (or the systems sciences) and in game theory.

As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved

Imagine if it turns out that a research conference organized to study the climate change, or any other of the "global problems", is not (systemically speaking) solving that problem – but only reproducing the paradox!

How to dissolve the paradox

The answer is obvious – and it is spelled out on the poster. If the system is broken, and the system is us – then the only thing left for us to do is to bootstrap a new system, to create it with our own bodies!

We can already see why being "an objective observer" is "a crack in the cup" from the angle of looking we have taken (where look at knowledge work as a system within a system, and at its impact on the larger system). Why it's essential to bring ideas to systemic impact – through systemic innovation, or bootstrapping.

And isn't that the essence of Engelbart's "unfinished revolution", what Engelbart entrusted us with (see Federation through Stories)?

Isn't that what we've been talking about all along?

Understanding evolution

Illuminating the way

But what if Reagan was right? Perhaps "the invisible hand" is our best guide?

What have we learned about our society from Darwin's theory? How well has the "survival of the fittest" served us so far?

What do we really know about this theme?

These questions are answered by the second thread on the poster.

What we've learned from Darwin

All we'll need from the theory of evolution is the core insight that Richard Dawkins explained in "The Selfish Gene" (which led to the development of "memetics" as a research field applying the theory of evolution to society and culture). According to Dawkins, Darwin's theory should not be interpreted as a way to perfection of any kind. To understand evolution, we must perceive it as favouring only the best adapted genes – or memes as 'cultural genes', when the society and not the natural world is our interest.

What made us powerful

Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist, begins the second thread. When asked what in his opinion was a high-social-impact insight that the research in linguistics was about to produce, Chomsky pointed to an (still unorthodox, he qualified) conclusion that our language is not a means of communication but of worldview sharing. (We improvise this explanation: A bird may see a hawk and go "tweet, tweet, tweet" and other birds will go "tweet, tweet, tweet" and soon enough all of them will be either be tweeting about the danger or gone. But that's not how our human communication works!

This may seem like an evolutionary error. But Yuval Noah Harari is there to explain why it's not – why this singularly human ability, to to create a story and make it a shared reality made us the dominant species on earth. (Put a gorilla and a human being on a deserted island, and guess who'll be more likely to survive. But if you put ten thousand gorillas on a football stadium, you'll get complete chaos! It's the football and so many other shared stories that literally gamify our social behaviour!)

Harari pointed to money as a prime example of a shared story that has successfully 'gamified' our existence. (Give a gorilla a banana – and he'll gladly take it. Ask him to trade it for a dollar – and he'll surely refuse. A human will, of course, be inclined to do the opposite. But the only reason why the value of this printed piece of paper exceeds the value of a banana is that we jointly believe that it does.)

What makes us powerless

How has the power of money (as our shared story par excellence) been used? How has it directed our societal and cultural evolution?

David Graeber, the anthropologist, is there to point to an answer.

The story we are about to share is adapted from Graeber's book "Debt; the first 5000 years", which is a history of money. We'll simplify it and use it as a parable.

So imagine that you are living 23 centuries ago. You are an exceptionally gifted young king, who has received the best education available in your time. And your ambition is to rule the world.

You know that with an army of 100 000 men you have a good chance to succeed. But there's a logistical challenge: To feed and clothe an army of that size, you'll need an army of 100 000 supply workers.

You think of a solution: You'll print coins and give them to your soldiers as salary; and you'll request of everyone else to pay those coins as taxes. In this way the supply workers will not even be needed, your people will take care of your army!

Your business model, as we might call it today, is now almost complete; but you've still got one problem to solve.

Alexander the Great – the historical king we've asked you to impersonate – needed half a tone of silver a day to pay an army that would satisfy his ambition! How in the world could anyone secure such massive amounts of precious metals?

Alexander had, it turned out, two ways to do that, and he used them both.

One way was to raid foreign countries, turn their free people into slaves, and have them mine silver and gold for him.

The other way was to raid foreign monasteries and palaces, and turn whatever sacred or artistic objects were of silver and gold into coins.

And so this business model is now complete. You might object that it's a kind of a Ponzi scheme; but for awhile it worked quite fine.

What interests us here, however, are the cultural and social implications of this this way of evolving.

We let you draw your own conclusions.

Reflection

The corporation

As the University of British Columbia law professor, Joel Bakan had an insight that, he felt, just had to be federated. It took him seven years, but the result was not only a popular book but also an award-winning documentary. Both are called The Corporation. You may watch the film by clicking here].

Bakan showed how through a legal-political evolutionary process, the corporation acquired the legal status of a person, and become the most powerful institution on the planet. What sort of character does this person have? Bakan's examination showed that it has all the characteristics of a psychopath.

Recall Erich Jantsch's insights about the preponderance of evolution (we shared them in Federation through Stories). Shall we become sustainable by swimming against the evolutionary stream? Or by intervening into its course?

We wrote the following in the abstract by which the paradigm strategy was announced:

The motivation is to allow for the kind of difference that is suggested by the comparison of people carrying buckets of water from their own flooded basements, with everyone teaming up and building a dam to regulate the flow of the river that is causing the flooding.